The BFF Club – 40 Years & Counting

School friendships are often the first spaces where we learn about trust, loyalty, compromise, empathy, and what it means to care for another person. These early relationships quietly teach us the social skills that adulthood demands: how to collaborate, how to listen, how to manage differences, and how to find your place within a group. These classroom friendships we make are not just fleeting connections; they are early training grounds for life.

My personal learning started with two remarkable friends I made over forty years ago. We call ourselves the 'BFF Club' now, but behind that light-hearted title lies something far more profound. How different the three of us are! Three backgrounds, three personalities, three paths: one a fashion designer, one an educator, and one a business major. Three corners of a triangle that shouldn’t logically fit together and yet somehow created the strongest shape. In those differences, we found understanding. In those contrasts, we found connection. And in that triangle, we found a bond that has carried us across decades.

This friendship I formed in a classroom all those years ago has not just given me memories. Our friendship does not require constant maintenance, it simply exists, steady and unshakable, no matter how busy life becomes or how far apart we live. With my BFFs, I have learned life skills, values, and a model of how to connect with people.

Today, as an educator, I focus on building strong teams, cultivating spaces where my students, the teams I work with can form strong bonds. I see my students creating their own little circles of trust, discovering kindness or conflict, learning to include, negotiate, and care for one another. And every time, I am reminded of that younger me, sitting with my friends who helped me navigate the complicated world of growing up.

People often say you cannot make real friends at work. I beg to disagree. My school friendships taught me how to build authentic relationships, and I have carried that with me into my career. Over the years, I have made meaningful friendships across my workplaces, and many of them have genuinely become my extended family. Your workplace CAN be a second family when you celebrate wins together, support each other through challenges, share ideas, and build a sense of shared purpose.

My understanding of friendship and relationships comes not from theory, but from lived experience, of what it feels like to belong, to feel supported, to learn with and from my friends. So to my BFFs - Thank you for playing a part in who I am today. For being my ‘constants’ (in spite of the miles between us, all those missed Zoom calls and our 50th-birthday getaway that is still stuck in the planning stage). But through it all remains that bond we share that has never needed perfect timing. Our friendship just grows and adapts - that kind of friendship that carries you through a lifetime.

So over to you then: Who is in your ‘BFF club’ and what makes them special to you?